The Bank of Lithuania has released a cryptocurrency ... for collectors
The Bank of Lithuania issued a blockchain digital collector's coin dedicated to the 1918 Act of Independence and its 20 signatories.
Claiming it to be the world's first coin, the central bank says it is "a bridge between classical numismatics and rapidly advancing financial technology."
The new LBCOIN coin, issued on July 23, is intended to be both a national symbol and a signal that the bank has made a strategic choice to stimulate innovation in finance and payments.
Marius Jurgilas, Member of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, presented a comprehensive overview of the project's objectives, stating that:
"In the digital economy, digital money is inevitable. Today LBCOIN is what allows people in Lithuania and around the world to test new technologies in a safe environment, e.g. remotely go through all authentication procedures, open an e-wallet, exchange digital tokens with other collectors or upload them to the public NEM network. "
Jurgillas added that for the bank, issuing a coin "allows for the know-how to issue central bank digital currencies, which in turn should benefit the central bank community and the euro area as a whole."
The LBCOIN issue consists of six digital tokens and one physical collector's coin. A total of 4,000 LBCOINs were issued - 24,000 tokens and 4,000 silver collector coins.
Silver collector coins have a face value of 19.18 euros, a tribute to the 1918 Act of Independence. Stamped in the Lithuanian Mint, their size and form resemble a credit card and have various symbolic details, such as the national anthem written in binary code. The coin also contains a QR code linked to the LBCOIN online store.
Each digital token is assigned to one of the 20 signatories to the law and falls into one of six categories - priests, presidents, diplomats, industrialists, academics and city officials.
After a collector buys a LBCOIN, the price of which is 99 euros, he receives six randomly selected tokens.
They can be exchanged for a physical collector's coin stored in the LBCOIN online store, sent as a gift, sold online, or transferred to a public NEM blockchain using the NEM wallet.
Temporarily purchases will be limited to one coin per person for a period of six days. After this time, purchases will no longer be restricted.
The Bank of Lithuania also has ambitious long-term plans to develop its own blockchain platform, which it intends to use outside the financial services sector.